> you are well within the top decile of income for the US
Yes and still can’t [responsibly] afford to buy in my locale :)
The situation is truly fucked and it’s about time Americans admit that housing cannot be both an expectation and an investment. Either everyone gets to own a house or it can be an investment. You can’t have both.
IMO housing is a consumption expense but people hate it when I bring that up at dinner.
> housing is a consumption expense
only the building portion.
The land is not consumed when you live there. It only appreciates due to the developments around that land, making it more desirable and thus, more valuable.
And if the land is more valuable, then it makes sense for it to cost more - either as rent, or as capital appreciation.
> everyone gets to own a house
which is not a truth, but a want/desire. So housing is an investment first and foremost, and will always remain so.
if you buy a house, you are entitled to rent it out and collect that rent.
if you then live in that house, you lose that rental income. That is what you are consuming. the rest of the investment remains intact.
as I like to phrase it, when you move from a rental into a house that you own, you still pay rent.
The idea of rent suggests that you're paying a use fee to an owner. But if you live in a house that you own, and therefore lose the potential rental income, who are you paying that use fee to? Is the loss of potential income really the same as rent? Because in that case almost every choice/action in life involves a potential loss of income. There's probably always something more profitable one could have done with time/money.
Your point about being both an investment and an expectation is important. It's a kind of perverse system. I have no idea how to solve it and I haven't heard any answer besides build more housing. I'll take that as the best answer until I hear more ideas. But even that is untenable because everyone who already owns a home blocks new builds. I don't understand why either in most cases given new development typically raises value of proximal real estate.